Religion

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Religion in 1066

Every character in the game follows a religion. A character's religion has a major impact on their gameplay mechanics. Cosmetically, the player character's religion determines the interface and icons used for the various alerts.

Powerful Muslim CBs allow fast expansion, but large realms often fail due to dynastic decadence. All faiths of Islam (but not all heresies) can have a Caliph, a secular (and thus playable) religious head who can declare Jihads.

Iqta government replaces both Feudal and Theocracy governments, allowing rulers to hold both castles and mosques without penalty. Iqta rulers can freely revoke duchies, and use Open succession to effectively designate heirs.

Control holy sites in order to boost moral authority and reform the religion.

Hellenic: Conquer and recreate a Hellenic Roman Empire

Reformed religions combine the best features of paganism and existing organized religions. They consider those following the old ways to be heretics.

Tribal rulers must reform (or convert) in order to adopt feudalism or found a merchant republic.

With , pagan reformation adds the ability to reform with a selection of natures, doctrines, and leadership, which allows the religion to be customized to gain the benefits of other religion's abilities.

If the Priesthood is restored, Zoroastrian Great Holy Wars can be declared immediately.

Heresies: All heresies are eligible for reincarnations if supernatural events are enabled.

Khurmazta: Has the Patron Deity mechanic (similar to Hindus). May not benefit from Divine Marriage or restore the Priesthood, but can become Saoshyant.

Mazdaki: No concubines nor Divine Marriage mechanics and have access to Summer Fair decision. No opinion penalties for female rulers and women may hold temples; women can also be appointed as commanders or Moabad (i.e. Court Chaplain), but NOT to other council positions. Enables Absolute Cognatic succession law.

Manichaeism: Is almost a separate religion and is very different from orthodox Zoroastrianism. No concubines and may not benefit from Jews (borrowing money) or Divine Marriage. Have their own religious feast and religious head. May also form a holy order if certain criteria are met and have different holy sites from other Mazdans.

Completely control the Empire of Persia in order to become Saoshyant and restore the priesthood.

Has subgroup Indian religions (Hindu, Buddhist, Jain). Characters can convert to another Indian religion if they control any province with the new religion. Provinces convert very slowly, but there is no revolt risk. No religious heads.

Faiths:

Hindu: Can raid and has +30% army morale. They are hindered by strict adherence to the caste system, and by lack of heir designation.

Jain: stability bonuses include a large demesne, vassal opinion boost, and pacifist AI that further reduces factionalism.

Taoist: +2 Stewardship. Can intermarry with some Pagan, Zoroastrian, Eastern and Christian faiths/heresies. Schools of thought give strong bonuses, but also maluses. Much easier to adopt Chinese Imperialism.

1Religion DLC is not required to play as a nomad; Horse Lords unlocks nomadic rulers of all religions. However, players must convert to a playable religion before they can settle down to a non-nomadic government type.

2All religions support concubinage when tribal or nomadic. For Muslims, this replaces polygamy for rulers.

If characters are of different religions, they'll get a large opinion penalty towards one another:

Name

Criteria

Opinion

Example

Religious Differences

Different religions of the same religious groups

-10

Catholic vs Orthodox

Heretic

Parent religion vs its heresies, and vice versa

-25

Catholic vs a Catholic Heresy

Infidel

Different religion group

-20

Catholic vs Sunni

Zealous

Anyone of different religion

-25

Stacks with standard penalty

This penalty, apart from Zealous, is reduced by the Tolerance technology in the capital of each character, -6.25% per technology level. Additionally, a character who is sympathetic towards another religious group has no Infidel penalty towards or from characters following a religion of that group.

Religion affects how Crown laws are applied. This is particularly important in regions which see frequent religious conflict (Iberia, Eastern Europe and the Near East), or are simply religiously diverse (India). Independent dukes and counts are considered to have the No Crown Authority Law, if the king of the de jure kingdom which they belong to is of another religion.

AI rulers will also never accept diplomatic vassalization if they follow a different religion from the potential liege's.

Religion also provides various Casus Belli, most notably holy war and Crusades, though this varies from religion to religion - both are unavailable to unreformed pagans for example. Sword of Islam also introduced two new Casus Belli specifically for Muslims.

Religion also affects what powers the religious head has; unreformed Pagans for example have no religious head, while a Christian religious head can excommunicate characters, which is impossible for Muslims (except Yazidis) and unreformed Pagans.

Pagan religions may gain a religious head and a Great Holy War (Crusade CB) if they reform. They then become the "Reformed" version. The version without a religious head and Great Holy War becomes a heresy and is called the "Old" version of the religion.

Since 2.4.1, when a temple that is designated a holy site is destroyed, the province becomes the holy site instead, but the value of the province for moral authority is reduced by half. This was to prevent the game from crashing when nomads/tribals raze a holy site.

Because a majority of Tengri land belong to nomads, they have no temples in most of their holy sites, forcing the player to build them.

The Pagan religion appears for characters in the history files, representing pre-Christian Irish and pre-Islamic Arabs, among others. The rare "Spawn of Satan" event can lead to the creation of 3 generic pagan witches, and the "Immortal Rival" event can lead to the creation of an immortal generic pagan, but otherwise they cannot normally appear in-game without the console.

Catholicism and all Catholic heresies become Orthodox heresies if the Great Schism is mended. This does not affect the Miaphysite or Nestorian denominations.

The unit modifiers for reformed pagan religions apply if you do not have the Holy Fury DLC. With Holy Fury only Reformed Germanic, Reformed Tengri, and Reformed Aztec have the specified modifiers. All other reformed pagan religion no longer get any unit modifiers unless they recieve them from the selected nature or doctrines.

All religions with a parent religion are heresies.
With Sons of Abraham, if a heresy becomes more prevalent than the parent religion (5 provinces more), it will become the new orthodoxy, and the parent religion will become a heresy. All holy orders of the parent religion switch over to the former heresy when this happens. Note that the Eastern religions do not have heresies.

When a pagan religion is reformed, anyone following it gets an event to decide whether to accept the reformation. If they don't, they are regarded as following the "Old" version of the faith, which is considered a heresy. The reformed version keeps the name of the pre-reformation religion.

Likewise, if an Orthodox ruler mends the Great Schism, Catholic rulers get an event to decide whether to convert to Orthodoxy (or the "heresy"). Either way, Catholicism is thereafter treated as an Orthodox heresy, and all the Catholic heresies become Orthodox heresies instead. Orthodox Heresies can also mend the Great Schism if they manage to replace Orthodoxy as the parent religion.